Two countries, two approaches to fighting terror

Tensions between the Muslim community and the RCMP were heightened by the Maher Arar case.

Photograph by: Ashley Fraser
, Postmedia News files

MONTREAL - The day Chiheb Esseghaier and Raed Jaser were arrested, the RCMP summoned 22 Muslim leaders in the Greater Toronto Area to warn them of what was about to unfold.

In fact, it was a Toronto imam who tipped authorities off in August 2012 that the two men had developed radical ideas and were planning to put those ideas into action — as it turns out, to allegedly plot to attack a Via Rail train between New York and Toronto.

For Muhammad Robert Heft, one of those 22 leaders, who has taken on the unenviable task of building bridges between the Muslim and intelligence communities, those details speak to the authenticity of the charges against the men, and law enforcement’s willingness to see Muslims as their allies — not their foes.

It has been a tough sell, however, Heft says.

“Most people in the (Muslim) community are looking at the timing of the arrests,” Heft says — just two days before the federal government passed new anti-terrorism legislation giving police and prosecutors more powers to detain and question suspects without charge.

”They can’t get past it. They think it’s a witch hunt for terrorists, and that I’m empowering the government. But we do have misguided youth, some of them planning to follow through on their ideas. If we keep pointing our finger at others and ignoring it, the problem just gets bigger.”

Bad blood between the RCMP and the Muslim community — notably after the Maher Arar affair, when the RCMP fed false information to the U.S. about Arar, contributing to his rendition to Syria and subsequent torture — has not helped.

Neither has the vastly different approach of authorities south of the border, who since 2009 have relied heavily on sting operations to convict would-be terrorists.

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In the Via Rail case, the third alleged conspirator, Ahmed Abbassi, was arrested in New York with the help of an undercover FBI agent who befriended him and Esseghaier, and taped their conversations.

Abbassi’s sister, Lobna Abbassi, has told reporters in Tunisia she believes her brother was a victim of entrapment by the FBI. Her brother was trying to get back to Canada to finish his master’s degree when his student visa, normally valid until 2014, was cancelled, said Abbassi, a lawyer in Tunis. It was an Egyptian acquaintance, whom he met with Esseghaier in Quebec last October, who offered to help him get a visa for the U.S. and, once there, to give him a job.

Abbassi arrived in the U.S. from Tunisia on March 18 and was arrested a month later, charged with lying to immigration authorities about why he wanted a visa when his true purpose, according to a Manhattan U.S. attorney, was “to commit acts of terror and develop a network of terrorists” in the U.S.

To be sure, family members rarely believe their relatives are guilty as charged. Believing in a conspiracy or frame-up is easier. But others also worry about U.S. authorities’ reliance on paid informants and sting operations as a way to “pre-empt” terrorism.

Karen Greenberg, the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School in New York, says about one-third of the 509 terror-related cases settled in federal courts since 9/11 stemmed from sting operations.

Typically, paid FBI informants start frequenting mosques and Muslim community centres espousing extremist ideas in order to identify targets who share those ideas, Greenberg says. When a suspect is identified, the FBI will sometimes invent a terror plot, and even supply the (fake) guns or bombs to make it happen.

Some sting operations explore the terrorist network in ways that are legitimate, Greenberg says. But in other cases, there are questions as to what — if anything — would have been done without government involvement.

Take, for example, the Newburgh Four — all poor, black men in a crime-infested neighbourhood, who were convicted in 2011 of plotting to blow up Jewish synagogues and shoot down military jets from Newburgh, about an hour north of New York.

In that case, the targets, the motive, the ideology and the plot were all led by the FBI, Greenberg says, which also provided the money and the weapons to carry it out.

According to reports on the trial, the FBI informant taught them the tenets of radical Islamist ideology, organized the scheme, and even offered one of them $250,000 to carry it out, before calling the FBI to have them arrested.

The judge convicted the men and sentenced them to 25 years in jail each. But she nevertheless had harsh words for the FBI tactics.

“I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime here except the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition,” said U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon. “That does not mean there was no crime.”

The conviction rate for terror-related cases is about 89 per cent, Greenberg says, with no jury or judge in the U.S. as yet acquitting a suspect on the grounds of entrapment. The problem is that these stings and prosecutions, and hence the justice system, are perceived to be unfair, she says, and add to the Muslim community’s already heightened sense of being singled out and watched, no matter who they are.

She laments the fact that there are no efforts being made in the U.S. to rehabilitate extremists, many of whom are young and impressionable.

“When you see someone you think you could talk into a crime of this sort, why wouldn’t the first approach be, ‘How can we make sure he doesn’t go down this road?’ ” Greenberg asks. “These are not leaders — they’re followers. ... We need to have an alternative so instead of seeing how far a suspect will go, we could see just how far we might be able to go to save this person and society from a crime.”

The timing of Abbassi’s arrest in New York, on the same day as Esseghaier and Jaser in Canada, led Greenberg to believe the FBI was rushed, and couldn’t wait, as it often does, to gather more evidence and lay more severe terrorism charges.

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Back in Toronto, Heft runs a support group and “theological detox” centre for vulnerable Muslim youth, where he tries to counter extremist beliefs with the same book they claim to follow — the Qur’an — and teach them that it takes a lot more courage to live than to die.

He hopes Canada doesn’t follow the U.S.’s lead.

“The FBI sets a trap, then says, ‘Who’s radicalizing these people?’ ” Heft says. “Sometimes the FBI is, and you lose the trust of the people.”

It’s that trust that led one man to confide in Heft years ago, saying a group of extremists was trying to recruit him and others to take part in a scheme to storm Parliament Hill and detonate truck bombs at various locations in Ontario — the so-called Toronto 18 plot.

Heft commends CSIS and the RCMP for their work in hiring an informant to infiltrate the cell and prevent the attacks.

“But if they bring in agents provocateurs and go down the road of entrapment,” he says, “I won’t be their cheerleader.”